Old Sandals

They say, ‘If a man divorces his wife, and she goes from him and becomes another man’s, may he return to her again?’  Would not that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the harlot with many lovers. Yet return to Me,” says the Lord.   Jeremiah 3:1

Yet return to me!  O Lord, are you sure? Did I really hear you say that? Give me ears to ear, O Lord. Have mercy upon me.

“For pass beyond the coasts of Cyprus and see, send to Kedar and consider diligently, and see if there has been such a thing. Has a nation changed its gods, which are not gods? But My people have changed their Glory for what does not profit. Be astonished, O heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid. Be very desolate,” says the Lord. “For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water.   Jeremiah 2:10-13

Human history is filled with idolatry.  Mankind has substituted all manner of things in place of the one true and living God.  Earthly things.  Temporal things.  Things that ultimately cannot satisfy.

Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Before you were born I sanctified you.  I ordained you a prophet to the nations….Do not say, ‘I am a youth,’ for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of their faces, for I am with you to deliver you.”   Jeremiah 1:4-5,7-8

These verses, and others like them, are often used by Bible teachers of the reformed persuasion to demonstrate that the Lord sovereignly chooses whom He will, apart from any human choice.

But is this what these verses are actually saying?  The Lord knew all of us before any of us were formed.  He knows the end from the beginning.  He knew us, i.e. He knew the choices each of us would make, whether for Him or against Him.  And based on that foreknowledge, He ordained this one and that one to serve Him in a particular way.  Isn’t that a very plausible interpretation?  It certainly seems to accord with the interpretation of the church during at least the first few centuries…

Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food, though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls—yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will joy in the God of my salvation.   Habakkuk 3:17-18

All of us should be thankful for the things that we have.  We count them as blessings.  And yet, the only thing each of us can really call our own is our personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.  Everything else passes away.  Though there be fig trees and fruit and flocks in abundance, it will all pass away.  But our love for God and His love for us will never pass away. It goes on and on forever.  This is why the prophet could rejoice in the Lord—regardless.

Behold,  is it  not of the Lord of hosts that the peoples labor to feed the fire, and nations weary themselves in vain? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.   Habakkuk 2:13-14

Without God, life is meaningless, and all our labor and striving—whatever it is—is like someone feeding a fire, where all is consumed, destroyed.

But God is with us.  God’s promises will not fail.  The earth will some day be filled with the knowledge of the Lord.  Let’s you and I do what we can now to hasten the coming of that Great Day.

Are You not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, You have appointed them for judgment; O Rock, You have marked them for correction.  You are  of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness. Why do You look on those who deal treacherously,  and hold Your tongue when the wicked devours a person  more righteous than he?   Habakkuk 1:12-13

The prophet is wrestling with God.  We can identify with the prophet, if we have any kind of relationship with God at all.  In my wrestling with trying to understand the “wrath of God”, I came across the following blog post by Monsignor Charles Pope, pastor of Holy Comforter-St.Cyprian in Washington, D.C.:

Not long ago I saw a bottle of hot sauce with the creative name “Wrath of God!” Now that’s gotta be some hot sauce! But what is God’s wrath? It is spoken of often in the scriptures and it is a concept with which we have to be careful. On the one hand we cannot simply dismiss the concept as contradictory to the fact that God is love. But neither can we fail to see God’s wrath apart from his love….What are some ways that we can explain and understand the wrath of God? Let me propose a few.

The wrath of God is not merely an Old Testament Concept. In fact we find it mentioned quite frequently in the New Testament as well. For example consider the following:

1. Jesus said, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him. (John 3:36)
2. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness (Rom 1:18)
3. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. (Rom 12:19)
4. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things [i.e. sexual immorality] God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. (Eph 5:6)
5. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thess 5:9)
6. The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. (Rev 14:19)

And there are at least a dozen other texts from the New Testament that could be referenced but allow these to suffice. So it is clear that the “wrath of God” is not some ancient or primitive concept that the New Testament has dispensed with. And notice too that the wrath of God is not something simply for the end of the world. It is also spoken of in some of the texts above and others not listed as something already operative in certain people.

So what is God’s wrath? And how can we reconcile it with his love?  Consider some of the images, explanations of God’s wrath. None of them all alone explain it but together a picture and understanding may emerge.

1. Image: God’s wrath is his passion to set things right. We see this image of God’s wrath right at the beginning in Genesis when God cursed Satan and uttered the protoevangelium (the first good news): I will make you and the woman enemies….one of her seed will crush your head while you strike at his heel” (Genesis 3:15). God is clearly angered at what sin has done to Adam and Eve and he continues to have anger whenever he beholds sin and injustice. He has a passion for our holiness. He wants what is best for us. He is angered by what hinders us in this regard. Surely all sins provoke his wrath but there are five sins that especially cry out to heaven: Wilful murder – [Gen. 4:10]; The sin of the Sodomites, [Gen. 18:20; 19:13]; The cry of the people oppressed, [Ex. 3:7-10]; The cry of the foreigner, the widow and the orphan, [Ex. 20:20-22]; Injustice to the wage earner. [Deut. 24:14-5; Jas. 5:4] (cf Catechism of the Catholic Church # 1867). In terms of all sin and injustice and anything that afflicts or hinders the possibility of salvation,  God has a wrathful indignation and a passion to set things right. This is part of his love for us. His wrath may be manifest through punishments, disturbances of our conscience, or simply by allowing us to experience some or all the consequences of our sin and injustice.
2. Clarification: God’s wrath is not like our anger. In saying that God is angry we ought to be careful to understand that however God experiences anger or any passion, it is not tainted by sin. God is not angry like we are angry. When we get angry we often experience an out of control quality, our temper flares and we often say and do things that are either sinful or at least excessive. It cannot pertain to God to have temper tantrums and to fly off the handle, to admix anger with an unreasonable lashing out. The way God does experience anger is not something we can fully understand but is it surely a sovereign and serene act of his will, not an out of control emotion.
3. Clarification: God is not moody. It does not pertain to God to have good days and bad days, good moods and bad ones. Scripture seems clear enough when it indicates that God does not Change. Consider this from the Book of James 1:17 Every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the Father of lights, in whom there is no variableness or shadow of turning. Hence to speak of God’s wrath does not mean that he has suddenly had enough or that his temper has flared, or that his mood has soured. God IS. He does not change. As the text says, he is not variable. And this leads us to the next point.
4. Image: Given what we have said,  the primary location of God’s wrath is not in God,  it is in us. Perhaps the best definition I have heard of God’s wrath is this: God’s wrath is our experience of the total incompatibility of our sinful state before the Holiness of God. Sin and God’s holiness just don’t mix. They can’t keep company. Think of fire and water. They do not mix. They cannot coexist in the same spot. Bring them together and you you can hear the conflict. Think of water spilled on a hot stove and hear the sizzle and popping and the steam as the water flees away. If, on the other hand there is a lot of water the fire is overwhelmed and extinguished . But the point is that they cannot coexist. They will conflict and one will win. This is wrath, the complete incompatibility of two things. It is this way between sin and God’s utter holiness. We must be purified before we can enter the presence of God otherwise we could never tolerate his glory. We would wail and grind our teeth and turn away in horror. The wrath is the conflict between our sin and God’s holiness. God cannot and will not change so we must be changed. Otherwise we experience wrath. But notice the experience is in us primarily and not God. God does not change, he is holy, serene, he is love. If we experience his wrath it is on account of us, not him. Consider the next example.
5. Image: It is we who change, not God and this causes wrath to be experienced or not –Consider an example. On the ceiling of my bedroom is a light with a 100 watt light bulb. At night before bed I delight in the light. I am accustomed to it. But then at bed time I put out the light and sleep. When I awake it is still dark (at least in the winter). Hence I put the light on. But Ugh! Grrr! Now the light is bright and I curse it! Now mind you, the light has not changed one bit. It is still the same 100 watt bulb it was hours earlier. The light is just the same, it is I who have changed. But do you know what I do? I blame the light and say, “The light is harsh!” But the light is not harsh, it is just the same as when I was happy with it. Now that I have changed I experience its wrath but the wrath is really in me. So also consider the experience of the ancient family of man with God. Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the evening when the dew collected on the grass (cf Gen 3:8).  They had warm friendship with him and did not fear his presence. After sin, they hide. Had God changed? He had not, they had and they now experience him very differently. Fast forward to another Theophany. God has come to Mt Sinai and as he descends the people are terrified for there are peals of thunder, lightning, clouds and the loud blast of a trumpet. The people told Moses “You speak to us, but let not God speak, else we will die!” (Ex 20:19) God too warned Moses that the people could not get close  lest his wrath be vented upon them (Ex 19:20-25). Now again, had God changed? He had not. He was the same God who walked with them in the cool of the evening in a most intimate way. It was we who had changed. We had lost the holiness without which no one can see the Lord (Heb 12:14). The same God, unchanged though he was, now seemed to us frightening and wrathful.
6. What then shall we do? If we can allow the image of fire to remain before us we may well find a hopeful sign in God’s providence. Since God is a holy fire, a consuming fire (cf Heb 12:26; Is 33:14) how can we possibly come into his presence? How can we avoid the wrath that would destroy us? Well, what is the only thing that survives in the presence of fire? Fire is the only thing that survives! So it looks like we’d better become fire if we want to see God. And thus it was that God sent tongues of fire upon the Apostles and us at our confirmation. God wants to set you and me on fire with the Holy Spirit and in holiness. God wants to bring us up to the temperature of glory so that we can stand in his presence: See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty.  But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years. (Mal 3:1-4). And indeed Jesus has now come:   For you have  turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath. 1 Thess 1:10-11)

So there is a wrath of God. As I have tried to show it is more in us than in God. But I will not say to you that there is NO wrath IN  God. Scripture seems clear to indicate that wrath does pertain to God’s inner life. What exactly it is and how God experiences it  is mysterious to us. We can say to some extent what it is not (as we did above) but we cannot really say what it is exactly. But far more rich is the meditation that the wrath of God is essentially in us. It is OUR experience of the incompatibility of sin before God. We must be washed clean in the Blood of the Lamb and purified….But if we let the Lord work his saving work we are saved from the wrath for we are made holy and set on fire with God’s love. And fire never fears the presence of fire. God is Love but he will not change. So it is that Love must change us.

After all this…Necho king of Egypt came up to fight against Carchemish by the Euphrates; and [King] Josiah went out against him. But he sent messengers to him, saying, “What have I to do with you, king of Judah?  I have  not  come  against you this day, but against the house with which I have war; for God commanded me to make haste. Refrain  from meddling with  God, who  is  with me, lest He destroy you.” Nevertheless Josiah would not turn his face from him, but disguised himself so that he might fight with him, and did not heed the words of Necho from the mouth of God. So he came to fight in the Valley of Megiddo. And the archers shot King Josiah…so he died.  II Chronicles 35:20-24

None of us can afford to rest on our spiritual laurels.  Now is the accepted time. Today is the day of salvation.

Woe to her who is rebellious and polluted, to the oppressing city! She has not obeyed His voice, she has not received correction, she has not trusted in the Lord, she has not drawn near to her God.  Her princes in her midst are roaring lions. Her judges are evening wolves that leave not a bone till morning. Her prophets are insolent, treacherous people. Her priests have polluted the sanctuary; they have done violence to the law. The Lord is righteous in her midst; He will do no unrighteousness. Every morning He brings His justice to light. He never fails, but the unjust knows no shame.  “Therefore wait for Me,” says the Lord, “Until the day I rise up for plunder. My determination is to gather the nations to My assembly of kingdoms, to pour on them My indignation, all My fierce anger. All the earth shall be devoured with the fire of My jealousy….I will leave in your midst a meek and humble people, and they shall trust in the name of the Lord. Sing, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away your judgments, He has cast out your enemy. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst. You shall see disaster no more. In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: “Do not fear.  Zion, let not your hands be weak. The Lord your God in your midst, The Mighty One, will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you with His love. He will rejoice over you with singing.”  Zephaniah 3

Here we have a summation of the Lord’s dealings with His people, Israel:
Their waywardness.  His faithfulness.
Their rebellion.  His jealous anger.
His judgement.  Their restoration.
Their joy.  His joy.

And He will stretch out His hand against the north, destroy Assyria, and make Nineveh a desolation, as dry as the wilderness. The herds shall lie down in her midst, every beast of the nation. Both the pelican and the bittern shall lodge on the capitals of her pillars. Their voice shall sing in the windows. Desolation shall be at the threshold, for He will lay bare the cedar work. This is the rejoicing city that dwelt securely, that said in her heart,
“I—and  none besides me.” How has she become a desolation!   Zephaniah 2:13-15

Even if there were no God, there would be no way to apply for the position.
To be God, you have to be immortal.
None of us are.
To be God, you have to be totally unique, beyond comparison to anything or anyone else.
We are all the same.
To be God, you have to be able to truly say, “I am, and none besides me.”
Ninevah’s application was flatly rejected.  Ours would be too.

And it shall come to pass at that time that I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and punish the men who are settled in complacency, who say in their heart, ‘The Lord will not do good, nor will He do evil.”    Zephaniah 1:12

Prayer changes us, it is true.  Prayer is humbling. Prayer can be very head-clearing, even cathartic.

But that’s not all.  Prayer changes things.  Not magically.  Not presto changeo. But actually, albeit mysteriously, according to the will of God.  When we doubt this, or underemphasize it, we risk becoming sinfully complacent, saying in our heart, “The Lord will not do good, nor will he do evil.  He will not do anything.”

Our God is Unchanging, but He is in the changing business.  After all, isn’t real change—a new creation inside and out, personally and universally—isn’t that what salvation is all about?